Zombie Fever: Outbreak by B.M. Hodges Page A

outcome of the race and we filmed the obligatory final shots at the winner’s circle then she retired to the air-conditioned comfort of her trailer. We watched as her driver drove her RV out of the parking lot and into formation with Kip and half of the crew vehicles as they got a head start to the next event location.
    When the shooting of individual team interviews were wrapped up, we were starving so the teams and the remainder of the crew walked over to an open canteen across the road from the track. The canteen was sparse, consisting of an overhead awning, picnic tables and a partitioned area with a large butane stove, two large buckets of tepid water and a few stacks of colored plastic dishes and bowls, meant to serve as a kitchen. We waited while the cook filled green plastic bowls with a local version of mee rebus and we ate together in the heat collecting under the metal roof, our faces shiny with go-kart exhaust and sweat. The teams tried to engage in polite chit-chat while they ate; knowing that the next pit stop was an elimination leg and one of them would be going home.
    In hindsight, it’s rather interesting that none of the teams even thought to mention the contagion ravaging much of the country they were racing in. We were so hyper-focused on the competition we’d lost all interest in our surroundings and the current epidemic sweeping the countryside was far from our minds.
    “Yeah, it’s the friggin Ang Mohs’ fault,” Lydia’s voice could be heard rising in anger as she complained to Sheldon at the head of the table. “Look at his injuries, lah!” She nagged, pointing to Derrik’s bloody legs. “If the Ang Moh wasn’t so reckless, he wouldn’t be in such pain.” You could hear resentment in her voice as she protested. She was angry, but we all knew it wasn’t about the relatively trivial accident on the track earlier. She was angry about their third place finish in the race. She seemed to believe that if she yelled loud enough, they might receive special consideration considering this was a Singapore production, they were Singaporean and the Ang Mohs were foreigners and, in her opinion, undeserving to win the million dollar prize. I noticed that she mentioned nothing about Tucker racing dangerously close to Derrik for half a lap, choosing to focus her complaints and anger on the white guy instead.
    Quaid and Norris were quite oblivious to her tirade. They sat in the far corner of the canteen laughing loudly, on an emotional high with their current first place performance. Those two weren’t so bad, I thought. They had a more innocent quality about them than your average expats. I’d read their team profile and knew that they were merely English teachers working in Singapore, not expat snobs on lucrative pay packages which was the picture Lydia was attempting to paint.
    “Lydia,” Sheldon sighed, “when you look at the tape you can see it was an accident. Quaid had absolutely nothing to do with the crash.” He was looking less than interested in the conversation as he texted on his business handphone in one hand and slurped up his noodles with chopsticks in the other.
    “Then why is their go-kart so much faster than mine? You guys in cahoots?” she yelled, waving her finger at Sheldon then at Quaid and Norris who were still laughing, enjoying their win. “You fix the winners of the race oledy is it?”
    Sheldon stiffened at this, little bits of noodles expelling from his open mouth as he let out an angry laugh. He couldn’t allow a contestant to talk to him in front of the cast and crew in this way, berating him with accusations of fixing the results of the go-kart race. His authority needed to be clear. Every reality show director knew that sometimes you had to tweak events a bit to make the show interesting. Only this time he’d done no such thing. He couldn’t be under suspicion from the very first event. It would make it that much harder to use such tricks later in the